Creating an MVC Controller Proxy for a Web API Controller

Question

I have an MVC project that is exposed externally. I have an internal Web API project.

For reasons beyond my control, I cannot expose the Web API project directly and I cannot add Web API Controllers to my MVC project.

I need to create an MVC Controller that will act as a proxy for a Web API Controller. I need the response from the MVC Controller to look as if the Web API was called directly.

What is the best way to accomplish this?

Is there a better approach than what I have so far?

How can I fix the error that I am getting?

Here is what I have so far:

MyMVCController

[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage GetData(HttpRequestMessage request)
    {
        ...

        var response = proxy.GetData();

        return request.CreateResponse();
    }

MyProxyClass

public HttpResponseMessage GetData()
    {
        ...
        return HttpRequest(new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, uri));
    }

private HttpResponseMessage HttpRequest(HttpRequestMessage message)
    {
        HttpResponseMessage response;

        ...

        using (var client = new HttpClient())
        {
            client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(120);
            response = client.SendAsync(message).Result;
        }

        return response;
    }

In the MVC Controller, I am getting an InvalidOperationException on the request.CreateResponse() line. The error says:

The request does not have an associated configuration object or the provided configuration was null.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have searched Google and StackOverflow but I haven't been able to find a good solution for creating this proxy between MVC and Web API.

Thanks!

Solution

You can do it by just creating some JsonResult action in your controller which will return result of calling web API.

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public async Task<JsonResult> CallToWebApi()
    {
        return this.Content(
            await new WebApiCaller().GetObjectsAsync(),
            "application/json"
        );
    }
}

public class WebApiCaller
{
    readonly string uri = "your url";

    public async Task<string> GetObjectsAsync()
    {
        using (HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient())
        {
            return await httpClient.GetStringAsync(uri);
        }
    }
}